bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/425686; this version posted September 25, 2018. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under aCC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license. Phospholipid-Cellulose Interactions: Insight from Atomistic Computer Simulations for Understanding the Impact of Cellulose-Based Materials on Plasma Membranes Andrey A. Gurtovenko,∗,† Evgenii I. Mukhamadiarov,‡ Andrei Yu. Kostritskii,‡ and Mikko Karttunen¶,§,† †Institute of Macromolecular Compounds, Russian Academy of Sciences, Bolshoi Prospect V.O. 31, St.Petersburg, 199004 Russia ‡Faculty of Physics, St.Petersburg State University, Ulyanovskaya str. 3, Petrodvorets, St.Petersburg, 198504 Russia ¶Department of Chemistry, the University of Western Ontario,1151 Richmond Street, London, Ontario, Canada N6A 3K7 §Department of Applied Mathematics, the University of Western Ontario, 1151 Richmond Street, London, Ontario, Canada N6A 5B7 E-mail:
[email protected];Web:biosimu.org 1 bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/425686; this version posted September 25, 2018. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under aCC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license. Abstract Cellulose is an important biocompatible and nontoxic polymer widely used in nu- merous biomedical applications. The impact of cellulose-based materials on cells and, more specifically, on plasma membranes that surround cells, however, remains poorly understood. To this end, here we performed atomic-scale molecular dynamics (MD) simulations of phosphatidylcholine (PC) and phosphatidylethanolamine (PE) bilayers interacting with the surface of a cellulose crystal.